


Freeze frame

by Minim Calibre (minim_calibre)



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minim_calibre/pseuds/Minim%20Calibre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Crackgen prompt: Dick Grayson and/or Barbara Gordon<br/>...must huddle to preserve body heat</p>
    </blockquote>





	Freeze frame

**Author's Note:**

> Crackgen prompt: Dick Grayson and/or Barbara Gordon  
> ...must huddle to preserve body heat

It's almost predictable. She knows: she's run the models, trying to figure out when the next city-wide crisis would hit, when the pattern would make itself known and what they'd have to deal with. The math and machines told her the when, but not the what. That's the chaos in her theory.

Well, she's figured out the what all right. Though it's kind of a no-brainer. A sudden cold snap, too much for the infrastructure to handle, no known cause. Right now, the only happy person in Gotham City is Mr. Freeze.

"It's not even this cold outside the Slab." Dick's pacing, each breath a puff of white in the chill of her living room.

"What power I can get has to keep the systems running, you know that. Essential machinery only, unless we're taking a break." Her fingers are starting to cramp from the cold, but she's not ready to stop for the night yet. She's the life-line. They need her. Gotham needs her.

Barbara turns her eyes to the screen, tries to keep them there. There's too much to do to let herself get distracted by the reminder of things past, now back in her present on Bruce's orders and against both their wishes. She can hear the quiet footfalls behind her, the constant movement that tells her no matter how else he's changed, he's still Dick.

By the time she's ready for a breather, it's fifteen degrees Fahrenheit inside and falling rapidly. Which is still about fifty higher than the exterior temperature. Her teeth are clattering, and she's almost as numb from the waist up as she is from the waist down.

"You can turn the heat back on," she tells him, backing the chair away from the desk.

Her eyes stay focused in front of her, like that will somehow make this less difficult. It doesn't. The rest of her senses are happy to fill in on the agony department. She hears him hurry to the thermostat, hitting the panel that will warm the room to something almost bearable. Hears him walk back her way, until he's almost close enough to touch and she can smell the soap he used last--her soap--mixing with the scent of his skin.

When she feels his arms close around her, she thinks at first its a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and the cold. But hallucinations don't lift her out of her chair, and she's had at least three hours of sleep in the last twenty four, and the coffee maker counts as essential machinery. She looks up, ready to snap at him until she sees the mulish set of his jaw, the one he too-obviously learned at Bruce's knee. It's enough to pause the snap.

Not enough to stop it totally, though. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

"We need to get warm."

Five years, and he still finds her bedroom like it's second nature. Who is she kidding? That sort of thing's first nature with Dick. He sets her down gently before he walks to her linen closet and pulls out every single sheet and blanket in it, even the Superman set Dinah gave her as a joke on her last birthday.

He looks so serious that no matter how angry she'd like to be, she can't help but laugh. "That's overkill."

After he's carefully arranged the last of the stack on top of the mattress--on top of her--he responds. "No." He slides under the mountain of blankets, and his arms slide around her, pulling her tight against him, his hands resting just under her breasts. "This might be, though."

Familiar smell, familiar touch, familiar taste. Five years slide away in the unnatural cold and the heat of passion. She's weak. She lets them go, just for tonight. This close, she can spot the first threads of white in the unkempt shock of black hair, the beginnings of a furrow in his brow. It's just a slip. A hiccup in time.

"This doesn't change anything." Her voice catches a little, damn him.

She can feel his fingers just above the small scar from the entry wound, tracing the edges where everything stopped. He shifts, burrowing closer, and all she can see is the cartoon blur of blue and red on a novelty sheet.

"I know."


End file.
